Re: BPF skels in perf .Re: [GIT PULL] perf tools changes for v6.4

[Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo]

Em Thu, May 04, 2023 at 07:01:51PM -0300, Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo escreveu:
> Em Thu, May 04, 2023 at 06:48:50PM -0300, Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo escreveu:
> > Em Thu, May 04, 2023 at 04:07:29PM -0300, Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo escreveu:
> > > Em Thu, May 04, 2023 at 11:50:07AM -0700, Andrii Nakryiko escreveu:
> > > > On Thu, May 4, 2023 at 10:52 AM Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > > Andrii, can you add some more information about the usage of vmlinux.h
> > > > > instead of using kernel headers?
> > >  
> > > > I'll just say that vmlinux.h is not a hard requirement to build BPF
> > > > programs, it's more a convenience allowing easy access to definitions
> > > > of both UAPI and kernel-internal structures for tracing needs and
> > > > marking them relocatable using BPF CO-RE machinery. Lots of real-world
> > > > applications just check-in pregenerated vmlinux.h to avoid build-time
> > > > dependency on up-to-date host kernel and such.
> > >  
> > > > If vmlinux.h generation and usage is causing issues, though, given
> > > > that perf's BPF programs don't seem to be using many different kernel
> > > > types, it might be a better option to just use UAPI headers for public
> > > > kernel type definitions, and just define CO-RE-relocatable minimal
> > > > definitions locally in perf's BPF code for the other types necessary.
> > > > E.g., if perf needs only pid and tgid from task_struct, this would
> > > > suffice:
> > >  
> > > > struct task_struct {
> > > >     int pid;
> > > >     int tgid;
> > > > } __attribute__((preserve_access_index));
> > > 
> > > Yeah, that seems like a way better approach, no vmlinux involved, libbpf
> > > CO-RE notices that task_struct changed from this two integers version
> > > (of course) and does the relocation to where it is in the running kernel
> > > by using /sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux.
> > 
> > Doing it for one of the skels, build tested, runtime untested, but not
> > using any vmlinux, BTF to help, not that bad, more verbose, but at least
> > we state what are the fields we actually use, have those attribute
> > documenting that those offsets will be recorded for future use, etc.

Yang, can you please check that this works?